His love for naval history was the primary reason for director Peter Berg to sign up for Battleship. In an interview I asked him how the conversation went when the studio called him up and said "Hey, Peter, we want to make a movie based on the board game Battleship. You down?" According to him he responded with a part excitement and part curiosity. Excitement because his Dad was a naval historian and the interest has been passed to him plus, he was a fan of the game. Curiosity came from the challenge of how do you take things from a board game and adapt it to a film that people would be interested in seeing and how do you create character in that realm that an audience would care about. If all those were his goals then I'd say he accomplished them.
There's not much to say when it comes to the summer blockbusters. Of course, you could always say more about some than others but Battleship is the kind of movie that you can say it was good and that's about it. It's about a naval fleet that comes in contact with alien craft in the Pacific Ocean and from there, it's pretty much game on. That's about all you need to know. It's kind of an Independence Day/Transformers/Battle: Las Angeles on the water. The actors all did a fine job. Rihanna made her big acting debut, which I think was overhyped. I'm not saying she doesn't deserve some sort of acknowledgement or positive accolades for her performance but from all the press it she had been getting, you'd think she'd be up for a Best Actress of All Time award.
I took my 8 and 11 year old boys to see it and they thought it was the best movie since, well, ever. The 11-year old said it was better than The Avengers but that's just crazy talk. It was mostly clean enough for the two of them. There were a few uses of words you wouldn't want them to repeat and there was one scene with a scantily clad Brooklyn Decker but otherwise it was fine. The level of violence was no worse (or scantily clad women) was no worse than a Transformers film.
I give Battleship 7 stars out of 11 and despite two young men arguing with me over why it should get a 10 or 11 I just can't go any higher. If you're looking for something exciting with intense action that should be okay for most kids then this is a movie you can easily watch.